Maggie Gee

An experimental black comedy in which a supposedly dead woman triumphantly rewrites the story of her own death, Gee started as she meant to go on: a self-confessed writer of "the big things in life", her subsequent novels have examined the effects of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima (The Burning Book); racism in Britain (The White Family) and the dystopias following various imagined natural disasters (The Flood; The Ice People).

Here, she discusses her latest book, a short story collection called The Blue, and her departure from her usual longer novel format. "I wrote this for fun and variety. It's satisfying to write something that can be perfect in four weeks: a novel takes three years!" In the programme, she goes on to talk about how she thinks that the short story is the perfect form for the modern world, given that we all apparently have less and less time; our attitude to the natural world and the role of women writers not least from her own position the first ever female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature.The Blue is priced £7.99, and is available from all good bookshops now.